Sunday, July 12, 2015

Ooredoo Kuwait rolls out unified cloud for NFV


Ooredoo Kuwait has successfully deployed network functions virtualisation (NFV) architecture and its IT applications on a single, unified cloud, it was announced this week.

The single cloud is based on VMware's vCloud for NFV platform, and was rolled out as part of Ooredoo's ‘Unify' initiative, which aims to take advantage of a software-defined data centre architecture, as well as NFV and software-defined networking (SDN).

VMware's professional services team partnered with the operator and its virtual network functions (VNF) vendor, Huawei, to design and deploy the VMware vCloud for NFV platform and virtual network functions into a test environment in less than three months. The solution supported the seamless transfer of the virtualised Core IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) from test environment to Ooredoo's production IT environment, and enabled Ooredoo to conduct its first voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) call.

"Reliability and availability were key factors in our decision to work with VMware. The production-proven VMware technology and our previous experience with the high levels of technical support offered by VMware professional services gave us the confidence to move to a unified cloud platform," said Mijbil Al-Ayoub, director of Corporate Comms, Ooredoo Kuwait.

"The speed at which we have been able to trial our unified cloud and onboard the VoLTE service functions into our IT network has exceeded our expectations. We did a joint R&D project that took only two months to complete, and we finalised the development of our vIMS product that can be deployed in a production, commodity infrastructure, automatically in only 3.5 hours."

The Ooredoo platform uses VMware's policy-based resource allocation features to maintain application service level agreement (SLA) enforcement, and software-defined networking capabilities of the VMware NSX network virtualisation platform to address NFV network scalability needs, multi-tenancy with microsegmentation, capacity on demand and QoS. VMware NSX is a main pillar in segregating tenants across Ooredoo‘s single converged private cloud.

"We're delighted to be working with such forward-thinking customers who understand the value of a platform-based deployment strategy for NFV," said David Wright, vice president, Telecommunications and NFV Group, VMware.

"By making the decision to deploy and manage a horizontally virtualised platform capable of supporting multivendor VNFs and IT workloads, Ooredoo Kuwait has created a powerful service environment capable of delivering high-value services to customers while managing operational costs."

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